Henry Herbert, Lord Carnarvon
Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, PC, DL, FSA, FRS 24 June 1831 – 29 June 1890 Kknown as Lord Porchester from 1833 to 1849, was a British politician and a leading member of the Conservative Party. He was twice Secretary of State for the Colonies and also served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Born at Grosvenor Square, London, Carnarvon was the eldest son of Henry Herbert, 3rd Earl of Carnarvon, by his wife Henrietta Anna, daughter of Lord Henry Howard-Molyneux-Howard. The Hon. Auberon Herbert was his younger brother. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1850 he succeeded his father in the earldom. His nickname was "Twitters", apparently on account of his nervous tics and twitchy behaviour. Carnarvon served under Lord Derby, as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1858 to 1859. In 1866 he was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies by Derby. In 1867 he introduced the British North America Act, which conferred self-government on Canada, and effectively created a confederation. Later that year, he resigned (along with Lord Cranborne and Jonathan Peel) in protest against Benjamin Disraeli's Reform Bill to enfranchise the working classes. Returning to the office of the British colonial secretary in 1874, he submitted a set of proposals, the Carnarvon terms, to settle the dispute between British Columbia and Canada over the construction of the transcontinental railroad and the Vancouver Island railroad and train bridge. Vancouver Island had been promised a rail link as a condition for its entry into British North America confederation. In the same year, he set in motion plans to impose the same system of confederation that he had applied in Canada, on the various states of Southern Africa. The situation in southern Africa was vastly different, not least in that several of its states were still independent, and so required military conquest before being confederated. The confederation plan was also highly unpopular among ordinary southern Africans. The government of the Cape Colony (the largest state in the region) firmly rejected confederation under Britain, saying that the time was not right and it was not the model applicable to southern Africa. Other regional governments refused to even discuss it. Lord Carnarvon believed that the continued existence of independent African states posed an ever-present threat of a "general and simultaneous rising of Kaffirdom against white civilization". He thus decided to force the pace, "endeavouring to give South Africa not what it wanted, but what he considered it ought to want." He sent administrators, such as Theophilus Shepstone and Bartle Frere, to southern Africa to implement his system of confederation. Shepstone invaded and annexed the Transvaal in 1877, while Bartle Frere, as the new High Commissioner, led imperial troops against the last independent Xhosa in the 9th Frontier War. Carnarvon then used the rising unrest to suspend the Natal constitution, while Bartle Frere overthrew the elected Cape government, and then moved to invade the independent Zulu Kingdom. However the confederation scheme collapsed as predicted, leaving a trail of wars across Southern Africa. Humiliating defeats also followed at Isandlwana and Majuba Hill. Of the resultant wars, the disastrous invasion of Zululand ended in annexation, but the first Anglo-Boer War of 1880 had even more far-reaching consequences for the subcontinent. Francis R Statham, editor of the Natal Witness in the 1870s, famously summed up the local reaction to Carnarvon's plan for the region: He (Carnarvon) thought it no harm to adopt this machinery (Canadian Confederation System) just as it stood, even down to the numbering and arrangement of the sections and sub-sections, and present it to the astonished South Africans as a god to go before them. It was as if your tailor should say — "Here is a coat; I did not make it, but I stole it ready-made out of a railway cloak-room, I don't know whether you want a coat or not ; but you will be kind enough to put this on, and fit yourself to it. If it should happen to be too long in the sleeves, or ridiculously short in the back, I may be able to shift a button a few inches, and I am at least unalterably determined that my name shall be stamped on the loop you hang it up by." The confederation idea was dropped when Carnarvon resigned in 1878, in opposition to Disraeli's policy on the Eastern Question, but the bitter conflicts caused by it continued, culminating eventually in the Anglo-Boer War. On his party's return to power in 1885, Carnarvon became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His short period of office, memorable only for a conflict on a question of personal veracity between himself and Charles Stewart Parnell, as to his negotiations with the latter in respect of Home Rule, was terminated by another premature resignation. He never returned to office. Carnarvon also held the honorary posts of Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire between 1887 and 1890 and Deputy Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire. He was regarded as a highly cultured man and was a president and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as was high steward of Oxford University. He was also a prominent freemason, having been initiated in the Westminster and Keystone Lodge, and with his permission a number of subsequently founded lodges bore his name in their titles. Lord Carnarvon married firstly Lady Evelyn Stanhope, daughter of George Stanhope, 6th Earl of Chesterfield, in 1861. They had one son, George Edward Herbert and three daughters. After her death in 1875, Herbert married secondly his first cousin Elizabeth Catherine Howard, daughter of Henry Howard, in 1878. They had two sons, of whom the eldest was the Hon. Aubrey Herbert. His eldest daughter Lady Winifred married as her second husband Lord Burghclere and was the mother of the Honourable Evelyn, first wife of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. Carnarvon's son Aubrey was the father of Laura Herbert, who was the second wife of Evelyn Waugh. Lord Carnarvon died at Portman Square, London, in June 1890, aged 59. His second wife survived him by almost forty years and died in February 1929, aged 72.